For that reason you might have thought that in any accident prevention strategy, minimising those situations would be a key goal. But the consultation currently being run by the SNP Scottish Government about potential changes to A road speed limits seems to be proposing the exact opposite.
Not only do they want to cut the speed of cars on single carriageway roads from the national limit of 60mph to 50mph, but they also want to increase the minimum speed of trucks over 7.5 tonnes to 50mph. Drivers would have little legal option but to join a convoy, because even on a slope when the heavy goods vehicles might slow down, it would be very difficult to get past in good time and not break the law.
Like Edinburgh’s 20mph limit, the basis of the change is the theoretical benefit of a higher survival rate if someone is in a collision and the speed is 10mph lower than it might have been, but to make a meaningful difference to the casualty rates would require a significant number of casualties to have been caused by accidents at or below the previous limit.
While the publicly available statistics do not reveal the exact details, it’s a fair assumption that many of the 155 deaths on Scottish roads in 2023 will have had other contributory factors, like excessive speeding well beyond existing limits.
As always there is an unachievable goal, this one of having no fatalities and serious injuries at all by 2050, which would require the abandonment of all private transport because there is no legislating for human error or sudden illness, and laws like this will always be broken.
Two of the highest profile deaths in Edinburgh roads in recent years, on the Old Dalkeith Road and the Maybury Road, were both caused by criminality which the new proposal would do nothing to change. The death toll on the killer A9 is more to do with dangerous junctions and just reducing the speed limit won’t stop people dying.
Given the SNP’s failure to improve problem roads like the A9, A77, A75 and A96 in their 18 years in charge, this new plan looks more like a way to avoid honouring promises than it is to improve connections, and so the economy.
No matter what the SNP does with A road speeds, it will not mean faster journeys for commercial vehicles trying to get to and from Edinburgh and the Borders because the SNP will not spend the money on the long-awaited and promised Sheriffhall roundabout improvement.
Whatever speed limit is imposed on the A68 or A7, the Sheriffhall bottleneck still looms, and as for increasing driver frustration, I can think of nothing more effective than forcing drivers coming up from the M74 to tootle along at 50mph on the long straits on the A702 north of Biggar.
Raising the speed limit for heavy goods vehicles by 10mph is long overdue, but there is something ironic in arguing that cutting speed saves lives and then allow the biggest vehicles go faster. The consultation closes on March 5, so make sure you let the SNP Scottish Government know what you think.
